douchebags

CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) is wrapping up its 2010 conference in DC today. It's kind of like the Coachella festival of Conservative politicians. (So Mitt Romney's on stage 2 right now, but then at three we have to pick between Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft!) But these riveting speakers aren't the only exciting draw this year. Nope--there are some fly honies at the conference, and The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson's conservative news site, has put this video together (equally poor in editing as in taste) documenting the earth-shattering revelation that there are women at CPAC who aren't named Ann Coulter or Michele Bachmann.
He basically goes up to women and proceeds to have a conversation like this:
Daily Caller: What brings you to CPAC?
Women: ...You mean besides the obvious fact that I'm interested in conservative activism?

Other than Jon, by and large, I have never been much of a watcher of late-night TV.  This is no doubt a function of my demographic.  I'm too young - I grew up post-Carson.   I'm also entirely too cynical to enjoy most celebrity interviews, because much of the time I'm thinking, "It's really bizarre that Kirsten Dunst is this inarticulate," or, "Why hasn't Jared Leto showered?"  There are too many books in the world to read, too many blogs to surf, too much sleep to be gotten for me to watch these people night after night, even in the age of the DVR.  And I've written in this space before about my suspicion that there isn't any grand standard of comedy anymore, and it seems to me like the non-Comedy-Central contingent of these shows still seem to harbour delusions on that score, of being the Great American Comedian, and so I just kind of tune them out.

So when this hullabaloo about David Letterman getting his pecker in his payroll started to kick up on Friday, readers, I yawned.  Having spewed venom all week over Roman Polanski and his defenders (Pedro, why, why??!!!), I was worn out.  Besides which, other than the extortion part, there seemed very little scandal in this scandal; the ladies involved were of age, and none appeared to be claiming coercion.  I'm not wild about professional men viewing nubile young women in the workplace as their rightful spoils, but I've been in enough exhausting conversations with male friends about such situations ("why do you want to Stand In the Way of Love?") to know better than to spend much time arguing with them about it.  I suppose Regina Lasko, Letterman's longtime girlfriend, feels somewhat differently about it, but I can't see how I or anyone else can be of use to her if we take to the soapbox to pontificate at length about just what a horndog she's married.

The psyche of the political wife in the modern era - which is to say, post-defining oneself by one's husband - is the kind of thing I sort of wish feminists talked about more often.  And when I say that, I mean talk about in a way that does not ultimately devolve to Hillary, Hillary, and also Hillary, who has become the sine qua non of political wife-fights.  In fact, I'd be cooler with these chats being all Michelle, Michelle, Michelle, and Judy Dean, Judy Dean, Judy Dean, each of whom present different models of how to deal with being, in essence, a necessary accessory to your husband's career when you in fact have quite the career of your own.  And you aren't, you know, a robot.  The frankly far too frequent infidelities of political men (and oh I could go on about this ultimate exercise of male privilege, this "I am important and I shall PROVE THIS WITH MY VIRILITY" and the non-apologies about "what happened" that inevitably follow, but I shall not) throw these issues into sharp relief.

So when I heard about The Good Wife I was kind of excited.  I was also excited that someone was handing Christine Baranski a paycheck, and there was even the small bonus of seeing Julianna Margulies though it disturbed my fantasy of her living a secret life with George Clooney and the twins in Seattle.  Margulies is in some ways perfect for this role: gravelly and serious.  The shoe of a professional woman whose life and priorities were eventually subordinated to that of her husband fits her pretty well, because there's something vaguely dissatisfied in her demeanour too.  And do I like that Chris Noth is embracing his slime post-hot-L&O-detective and in the shadow of supposedly-dashing Mr. Big?  I do.  I really do.